


Ultracrepidarian

by cherryjam (blueskull)



Series: FFXIV Write 2020 [7]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Angst, Au Ra Raen (Final Fantasy XIV), Character Death, F/F, FFxivWrite2020, Hurt/Comfort, Hyur (Final Fantasy XIV), Injury, Pre-ARR, implied/past child abuse, nothing explicit just implied unpleasantness, part of it takes place during the calamity, written for ffxivwrite2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:41:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26472784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueskull/pseuds/cherryjam
Summary: A tale of how a girl came to be an unbeliever.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Series: FFXIV Write 2020 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1913422
Kudos: 2





	Ultracrepidarian

The pain in her skull is overwhelming. All she can smell is blood, all she can feel is the pain lancing through her entire body. She has not an idea of where she is nor where she _was_ ; the only thing she can remember is their enraged, leering faces, before she’d stumbled out the door and lurched into the woods.

And then, nothing.

No sense of time, no sense of reason --

She smells fire and poultice. She thinks she can hear voices. Her one good eye struggles to focus past the blinding light overhead. She thinks she can see someone’s figure. But she can’t tell who it is. Before she can even begin to try to focus, her mind fades.

________

The next time she opens her eye, she’s on some sort of makeshift bed, coarse cloth fastened between two branches. Before she can think better of it, she throws herself off it, landing in the grass and leaves below.

“O-oh no!” a voice gasps out. The girl whirls to look at whoever approaches -- their dainty feet kicking aside debris -- but her vision swims with motes of light and pain at the abrupt movement. “You have to lie down!” Thin fingers clasp around her wrists, and the girl tenses, her proverbial hackles bristling.

She tries to struggle free, but all she manages is to tumble back onto the strange stretcher she had been on.

“I-I’m sorry,” the voice, a young girl, perhaps around her age, continues. “But you have to lie down. It’s not safe for you to move. Not with that injury you have.” The hands leave her as her vision slowly returns.

The blonde girl that stands before her is short, petite, a dress that may have once been white slung about her in tatters. Grimy. Dirty. Unremarkable. But the most striking thing about her --

Is the scars, stretching across most of her face, her neck, her arms and hands. It stands in grotesque contrast to whatever remains of pale, unmarked skin and pale hair. If the one-eyed girl’s stomach hadn’t already been churning, it would have started merely at the sight.

Swallowing harshly, she looks away. But the girl continues speaking.

“My name is Kiyomi. What’s yours?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Oh...d-do you maybe not have a name? Or -- oh, no, can you not speak at all?!” Kiyomi doesn’t seem to get the message. The little hyur continues to talk, almost panicked, when she refuses to respond. At least she doesn’t try to touch her again.

But for the moment, she’s content in the knowledge she could deck the floor with this girl if she ever tried anything. She’s willowy, wispy, would probably blow off in the wind, if those mass of scars didn’t keep her in place.

“Ah, I can see our guest has awoken.”

Another voice interrupts their exchange — an older woman’s voice. Her gait is harsher, uneven — does she have a cane?

The girl is slower to turn her head this time. Her eye roves across the trunks of trees, foliage, pinpricks of what looks like a cottage through the trees. It lands upon a weathered-looking, smiling woman, hair curled and as grey as her clothes.

There is something off. It pangs in the girl’s stomach, in the calculating way the woman casts her gaze toward Kiyomi. A wolf’s look.

“Wonderful.” The woman’s hand tightens upon her walking stick, her knuckles whitening beneath old, gnarled skin. “I’ve found someone, Kiyomi. Would you come with me?” The smile she gives the girl is anything but friendly.

“I won’t be long, Aatchan.” The blonde gives her a smile and a faint wave as she walks after the woman, a little lamb lead to the slaughter.

Aatchan...? Is that supposed to be her?

She keeps her one good eye on the girl’s retreating back until she can see her through the trees no longer. Then she upturns her heavy head to stare up at the sky.

No matter. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t concern her. She doesn’t know her. It doesn’t matter that they’re close in age, or whether or not she’s ugly. It doesn’t matter that she knows her name.

 _Kiyomi_.

But there’s a prickly, sticky, oozy sensation that won’t leave, won’t sluice off her skin no matter how hard she rubs her dirty hands together. Her instincts. Her instincts have hardly ever been wrong.

Something is wrong.

So despite herself, despite Kiyomi’s warnings — she’s never listened to anyone anyway — she slides off the makeshift bed again. She takes in a deep breath of air, her toes curling into the grass and dirt. Steadies herself.

Everything is fine.

She trudges up the low hill, pushes aside the branches of the bushes as she makes her way after them. She’s almost painfully aware of her head, her entire face feeling like one huge bruise. Worse. So long as she doesn’t make any sudden movements, it should be okay. She hopes.

Careful to keep the branches away from her face, she stumbles into a clearing. What she sees there makes her blood boil and overflow.

Kiyomi lays upon an old cloak, her filthy skirt raised high above her skinny knees. A man crouches over her, hands busy at his breeches, while the old woman looks on callously.

There’s nothing but red as the one-eyed girl surges forward, her aether bursting from her fingertips the very same way it had thrust her father into the wall of their filthy four-walled home, cracking ribs. The pulse of raw energy collides with the man at the same instant as her shoulder hits him in his arm, and he stumbles and falls with a sharp, pained gasp.

Her brain protests the sudden motion, but she refuses to listen. Instead, she leans down and grasps one of Kiyomi’s thin wrists and pulls her up. Even as her vision blurs and pops with colour, her grip never slackens.

“We’re...going,” she manages to rasp, the first words she’s spoken since waking up in this stupid place. Maybe this is all a dream.

“A-Aatchan?!” Kiyomi stammers, saying that name again. “What do you mean? I -- ”

“You can’t go without paying,” the woman interrupts. The one-eyed girl cranes her head to look at her. “Your darling Kiyomi entrusted your life to me. I need compensa -- ”

Her voice trails off at the look of pure, burning hatred in the girl’s eye.

“Don’t care about your fucking money, old hag.” Gritting her teeth, the girl collects all the strength she can muster and spits at the woman’s feet. Then she begins to lug Kiyomi away.

Just after they manage to get past the tree line, she turns and vomits onto the grass. Everything... _everything_. It all makes her sick. She feels sick, tastes sick, for once she wishes she could wake up in that house.

The silence as the girls walk through the woods is uncomfortable, prickly, oppressive.

"Who is ‘Aatchan’?” she asks after a long while. The hyuran girl is quiet before she replies, biting her lower lip.

“She wouldn’t have done this for a stranger,” she whispers. “S-so, I had to say we’re friends. And give you...a name.”

As if that’s supposed to make her feel better. “You shouldn’t have...you shouldn’t --” Her life is not worth someone’s chastity. Or body.

“I was thinking of selling it off sooner or later anyway.” She shrugs her thin shoulders as she says such a cold thing so matter of factly. “It’s good money. It would have been nothing. At least this way, I could have traded it for something valuable.”

For a stranger she knows nothing about. For someone who is nobody to her. Nothing.

“Y-you shouldn’t use your...body like that.” At least nothing had happened.

“This body is naught but a shell. My soul is safe and sound.” Kiyomi puts a hand to her chest, gives her a soft smile. The one-eyed girl’s stomach churns, turns over. She looks away. The girl continues speaking anyway. “The kami willed for us to meet. I’m sure of it.”

Did the kami want her to sell her body off for pennies, too? Her jaw clenches. She still hasn’t let go of Kiyomi’s wrist.

 _Aatchan_.

“My name...is Mitsuru.”

________ 

Kiyomi is a flower seller. Mitsuru is a thief, a thug, nothing more than a stain upon her dress.

Mitsuru can’t leave this tiny, thin, malnourished girl alone, so she goes with her.

Kiyomi seems to think they’re “friends”, anyway.

She wanders after the blonde as she picks flowers, gently laying them in her basket. She treats them as if they were precious little things.

Mitsuru, before, would have simply trampled across them as she walked, unthinkingly kicking at the ground. Now she picks up some sort of red flower with delicate petals, hands it to Kiyomi to inspect.

“Oh, a hibiscus.” The girl beams at her, and for some reason Mitsuru finds it hard to breathe. “It’s almost the same colour as your hair.” Instead of placing it into her basket, she reaches to tuck it into Mitsuru’s hair, just above her horn. On her blind side.

She resists the urge to flinch. Kiyomi is too simpleminded to want to hurt her.

“It suits you!”

“Right...”

She lifts a hand to lightly touch the petals in her hair. She’s not sure if it suits her. She can’t even see how it looks. It must look ridiculous next to the dirty, bloody mess of her clothes. Mitsuru had never suited flowers, even before.

Kiyomi? Kiyomi looks like she was born in a field of them.

Business is poor today, too. It can’t be helped with the state of most of the villages they stumble into. There are hardly those who would want to spend more than a few coins on some flowers, if anything at all.

Kiyomi bites her lip as she looks at the persimmon Mitsuru lays in her hand. They’re sitting beneath the stars outside the village, a makeshift fire in front of them.

“How much did you pay for that?”

“...”

“Mitchan?”

“...”

“O-oh, sorry, I just -- ”

“...It’s all right.”

She doesn’t really care. Anymore. About the nickname.

If there’s anyone she doesn’t mind saying that, it’s her. They owe each other that much.

Kiyomi clumsily tries to peel the persimmon; her soft, thin fingers making faint dents in the flesh. Mitsuru puts her fruit down and wrests it from her.

“Lemme do it.” Brandishing her knife, she cuts into it easily, pulling away the skin. Her hands are dirty -- both their hands are -- but neither of them care. Food is food, no matter how it looks like. And these are fresh.

Kiyomi’s tiny smile as she takes the peeled fruit back from the one-eyed girl is brighter than all the stars in the sky. Maybe, maybe she is beautiful. More beautiful than anyone Mitsuru has ever seen.

“I suppose the kami can overlook this just this once.”

They overlook it many, many times.

________

Kiyomi’s fingers are gentle as they weave through Mitsuru’s reddish hair. Pushing her bangs away from her face, she carefully removes the white eyepatch.

The gouge has scarred and faded, nothing more but a hole where her eye would have once been. Yet Kiyomi still insists on cleaning it for her, though there is nothing to clean.

“It could still get infected,” she’d said the first time, though Mitsuru isn’t sure how true that is. Then again, she doesn’t know a lot about injuries at all. “Kami preserve, I hope that won’t happen.”

Kami this, kami that, it feels, sometimes, like that’s all she ever talks about.

This time is no different, as she carefully sponges at the raen’s face. But this time, for some reason, Mitsuru feels compelled to speak.

“Your kami...” Her one good eye struggles to focus on the thin, birdlike girl. “Where were they when this happened?” It’s obvious what _this_ is. “Where were they when...”

She doesn’t think about it. She just lifts her hand and --

More gently than she could have ever thought herself capable of doing, she touches her fingers upon the dark scarring on Kiyomi’s face. For once, the hyuran girl seems discomforted, though not by the touch. Mitsuru watches her throat as she swallows harshly. Her crystal blue eyes fill with tears, and though it tears at the raen’s heart, she continues.

“What sorta kami decides a girl should be born into a house that doesn’t even want her? What sorta kami has her go back, again and again, ‘til she can’t stand it anymore? What kinda kami lets _this” --_ for the lightest of touches, her fingers caress Kiyomi’s face -- “happen?”

The tears flow freely down the scarred girl’s cheeks, and she gently shakes her head. One of her trembling hands moves to grasp at Mitsuru’s, holding it close to her cheek, keeping it there. She nuzzles into the touch.

“The kami watch over us,” she whispers, her voice cracking. Her other hand falls from Mitsuru’s useless eye. “A-and sometimes, they give us trials like this. But we always come out stronger for it. It’s true. It’s true...if not for them, I -- I would have never met you, Mitchan.” The more she babbles, the more tears pour from her eyes, the more desperate her voice rings. “ _I-I-I’m so happy to have met you_.”

Mitsuru’s stomach churns.

“Yeah. Yeah, me too.”

She’s happy. To have met her.

She can’t imagine a tomorrow without her. Even with all her blabbing about gods this and gods that.

________ 

The earth groans beneath their feet, trees falling to the ground. Roofs burst into flames. The two girls clutch one another’s hands as they stumble through the terror laying waste to the world. Even the animals pay them no heed, too invested in saving their own skins.

Mitsuru and Kiyomi throw themselves in a shallow cave, Mitsuru wrapping her ragged arms around her. The blonde hyur has long discarded her flower basket, preferring instead to cling to the slightly older girl for safety.

The sky, an angry purple above them, seems to crack open as a lightning bolt streaks across it. The rain hasn’t stopped pouring for what seems like hours -- they’re both chilled to the bone. And yet they can still remember the stench and flames of the little village they had been at that morning. It’s pouring, and yet smog fills the air.

“Are...are you all right, Kiyomi...?”

“I-I’m fine. We’ll be fine. It’ll all be okay. Mitchan.” Kiyomi’s fingers let go of her to clasp together, her eyes sliding shut. Ah. This, again. Her lips move fervently in silent prayer as she pleads with her gods. Her all-knowing kami.

And they answer.

“Mitsuru!”

“Kiyo -- ?!”

In an instant, she’s gone. Just. Gone.

As if in some sick play, the depths of the cave seems to open like a great maw. From within it, a plume of water bursts forth -- ripping Kiyomi away from her and sending the girl tumbling into the overflowing river.

The water is gone. There is just the river, the cave, and Mitsuru. Mitsuru, her one eye filling with tears as she opens and shuts her hands fruitlessly.

“K-Kiyo...!”

Her head hurts. Her eye that isn’t there hurts.

Stumbling back into the storm with a gasp, she hurtles down the nonexistent riverbank, long ago trampled and flooded and ruined. Her feet sink into the mud. But there is one saving grace for her. One shining light.

In the midst of the river is a tangle of branches and logs, creaking and groaning. Perhaps -- maybe -- 

She doesn’t think. She simply throws herself into the water. The undertow rips the bandages off her face, and she struggles back to the surface for air, only to dive back down again. She can see someone there, at the bottom, trapped against the stones and branches.

Her mouth nearly opens as she tries to call Kiyom’s name.

 _It’s Kiyomi_.

Her heart sings as she fights the current, her hand reaching to clasp the hyur’s smaller, thinner one in hers. She has her. It’s okay. She’s going to take her back. To the surface. And everything will be fine.

As she pulls, Kiyomi’s expression changes from joy to panic. Mitsuru nearly inhales water in her horror. She pulls again, harder. But the other girl will not budge.

As quickly as relief had flooded her, fear and panic take over. Fumbling blindly, she grabs at Kiyomi’s other hand -- it’s loose, it’s fine, why won’t she come with her?! As she sinks lower, she finds the reason. Kiyomi’s feet are mangled within the tree branches, and no matter how hard she tries, the weight of the others are too much for her to pull her free.

She needs air.

She surfaces for only the bare minimum she needs before swimming back underneath again. Desperately she does all she can to no avail.

Kiyomi’s mouth moves. _It’s okay it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay_.

When she finally lets herself crawl back to shore, hours later, whatever is left of the sun is long gone. Gone from the sky, gone from her heart. It’s all gone. There is nothing left. It’s all empty.

________ 

She told herself she would never be like her father. But she’s starting to understand why he so liked to drown himself in spirits.

It lets her forget everything.

________

Mitsuru’s head thunks heavily against the barrel as she huddles deep in the cabins of the ship she’d snuck on. Her one good eye slides shut as she prepares to sleep on the long voyage to Eorzea. She’s tired. Later she’ll have to find some booze and grub.

________

Kiyomi, Kiyomi. She had never known anything about the kami.

Gods don’t exist.


End file.
